Backyard Restoration Gardening - Book Review
The Landscaping Ideas of Jays by Judith Larner Lowry
May 10, 2009
The Landscaping Ideas of Jays: A Natural History of the Backyard Restoration Garden, University of California Press, describes a form of gardening guided by the teachings of jays, quail, solitary bees, and California’s native plants themselves. Author and long-time gardener Judith Larner Lowry says restoration gardeners in California aim to boost native plant diversity while attracting wildlife and conserving water.
Gardening for California’s Five Seasons
Lowry distills her 25 years of wisdom on specific plants, practical cultivation techniques, and seasonal activities then organizes it around California’s “five” seasons.
The “fifth” season is unique to lands with an arid Mediterranean-type climate. This season is the somnolent time after five months of no water, when it’s best to prune. Cool rains usher in fall, which is the time of seed gathering and planting. Winter is the time for stories, spring the time of the flower dance, and summer the time for container plantings and forbs (broad-leaved herbs).
What is restoration gardening?
Lowery sees restoration gardening as a transformative practice that focuses on the return of indigenous, locally adapted species to the habitats they once occupied. According to Robert Ornduff’s Introduction to California Plant Life (University of California Press, 1974), 30% of California’s plants are endemic, or unique, to the state, but large areas of the state have been taken over by exotic invasive species.
Restoration gardening borrows techniques from a variety of movements including organic gardening, xeriscaping, permaculture, restoration ecology, adaptive land management, and indigenous plant culture. The goal of restoring one’s backyard is to create gardens that will “function in multiple ways: as pleasurable landscapes, as significant food sources, and as restored habitats.”
Lowry’s approach is to consciously partner with the wild organisms that inhabit her garden. For example, to cater to the needs of California quail she:
- cultures seed and herb plants for food;
- plants bunchgrasses for nesting habitat;
- provides dense shrubs for roosting and refuge from predators;
- maintains sources of water;
- allows areas of open soil for dust baths in late summer;
- foregoes pesticides of all kinds.
The Landscaping Ideas of Jays: Revolutionary and Inspiring
Lowry seeks to convince gardeners that they can be a pivotal force in reversing the golden state’s declining biodiversity. Her most ecstatic praise and sorrowful elegies are reserved for California’s resplendent spring wildflower displays, mere whispers of their former glory. But she points out that it is still possible to go flowering in California, both by looking afield and by recreating a “sampling of splendor” on one’s own land.
The Landscaping Ideas of Jays: a Natural History of the Backyard Restoration Garden is published by the University of California Press, 2007 (ISBN-10: 0-520-24956-9) for $25.95 in paperback. Further details are available from University of California Press.
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